Exclusive: House Benghazi Panel Subpoenas Former Clinton White House Aide

[Purveyor]

Source: Reuters

By Mark Hosenball
3 hours ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Congressional investigators have issued a subpoena demanding that former Clinton White House adviser Sidney Blumenthal testify next month before the House of Representatives committee investigating the 2012 attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya.

The subpoena, a copy of which was made available to Reuters, demands that Blumenthal appear before the House committee on June 3 to give a deposition. The subpoena is dated Monday but carries a notation indicating an unnamed deputy U.S. marshal served it on Blumenthal's wife on Tuesday.

The copy of the subpoena contains no further details about the subject matter of the deposition.

"I can confirm Mr. Blumenthal has been called for a deposition by the committee," Jamal Ware, a spokesman for Republican Representative Trey Gowdy, the Benghazi committee chairman, said in response to a Reuters query.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-u-house-benghazi-panel-subpoenas-former-clinton-002126559.html

[applegrove]

1. This is Hillary's whitewater investigation. Pure fishing

on the part of the GOP.

[awake]

4. Or Libya could be Hillary's "Mission Accomplished"

This was not her finest hour, one of my concerns about HRC is how hawkish she is in pushing to use the military with out fully thinking out the end game. Libya is a big mess and I do not think that anything Hillary did as Secretary of State helped.

[CBHagman]

5. Attacks on U.S. personnel are the equivalent of launching an invasion?

And suddenly the procedure is to run about screaming, "What did the secretary know, and when did she know it?"

Unfortunately there have often been attacks on U.S. personnel and their local staff around the world, though it's rare for an ambassador to die under those circumstances.

I think if more people actually listened to the regular State Department briefings, followed news reports more closely, and also took the time to look up recent history, they would be astonished at how many people have died in attacks on U.S. facilities without drawing the sort of attention Benghazi is getting on Capitol Hill and in the media.

[url]http://history.state.gov/about/faq/ambassadors-and-chiefs-of-mission[/url]

Since World War II, the following U.S. Ambassadors have been killed by militants:

John Gordon Mein, Ambassador to Guatemala, August 28, 1968. Mein was killed by a gunman in Guatemala City.

Cleo A. Noel, Jr., Ambassador to Sudan, March 1, 1973. Noel was taken hostage in Khartoum and killed by his kidnappers.

Rodger P. Davies, Ambassador to Cyprus, August 19, 1974. Davies was shot during a demonstration at the Embassy in Nicosia.

Francis E. Meloy, Jr., Ambassador to Lebanon, June 16, 1976. Meloy was killed by a gunman in Beruit.

Adolph Dubs, Ambassador to Afghanistan, February 14, 1979. Dubs was captured in Kabul and was killed during the rescue attempt.

J. Christopher Stevens, Ambassador to Libya, September 11, 2012. Stevens was killed in an attack on the Mission in Benghazi.

I think if more people actually listened to the regular State Department briefings, followed news reports more closely, and also took the time to look up recent history, they would be astonished at how many people die in attacks on U.S. facilities without drawing the sort of attention Benghazi is getting on Capitol Hill and in the media.

[url]http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/211361.pdf[/url]

[url]http://www.politifact.com/embassyattacks/[/url]

Unfortunately posturing, social media, and posturing on social media helps skew people's perceptions of reality and inflame emotions.

[jakeXT]

6. The Pentagon didn't trust the State Department

The tapes, reviewed by The Washington Times and authenticated by the participants, chronicle U.S. officials’ unfiltered conversations with Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s son and a top Libyan leader, including criticisms that Mrs. Clinton had developed tunnel vision and led the U.S. into an unnecessary war without adequately weighing the intelligence community’s concerns.

“You should see these internal State Department reports that are produced in the State Department that go out to the Congress. They’re just full of stupid, stupid facts,” an American intermediary specifically dispatched by the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the Gadhafi regime in July 2011, saying the State Department was controlling what intelligence would be reported to U.S. officials.

..

The surreptitiously taped conversations reveal an extraordinary departure from traditional policy, in which the U.S. government speaks to foreign governments with one voice coordinated by the State Department.

Instead, the tapes show that the Pentagon’s senior uniformed leadership and a congressman from Mrs. Clinton’s own party conveyed sentiments to the Libyan regime that undercut or conflicted with the secretary of state’s own message at the time.


Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jan/28/hillary-clinton-undercut-on-libya-war-by-pentagon-/

[CBHagman]

9. Wait, you forgot Newsmax.

You've used The Washington Times and Fox News as sources, but you neglected to include the right-wing Newsmax for the same story.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

2. I wonder if they'll ask if Hillary is a lesbian....

You know,...as part of the investigation.

[jakeXT]

3. Barred from a State Department job by Obama aides, interesting

When the Clintons last occupied the White House, Sidney Blumenthal cast himself in varied roles: speechwriter, in-house intellectual and press corps whisperer. Republicans added another, accusing Mr. Blumenthal of spreading gossip to discredit Republican investigators, and forced him to testify during President Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial.

Now, as Hillary Rodham Clinton embarks on her second presidential bid, Mr. Blumenthal’s service to the Clintons is again under the spotlight. Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, a Republican who is leading the congressional committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, plans to subpoena Mr. Blumenthal, 66, for a private transcribed interview.

Mr. Gowdy’s chief interest, according to people briefed on the inquiry, is a series of memos that Mr. Blumenthal — who was not an employee of the State Department — wrote to Mrs. Clinton about events unfolding in Libya before and after the death of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. According to emails obtained by The New York Times, Mrs. Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time, took Mr. Blumenthal’s advice seriously, forwarding his memos to senior diplomatic officials in Libya and Washington and at times asking them to respond. Mrs. Clinton continued to pass around his memos even after other senior diplomats concluded that Mr. Blumenthal’s assessments were often unreliable.


...

While advising Mrs. Clinton on Libya, Mr. Blumenthal, who had been barred from a State Department job by aides to President Obama, was also employed by her family’s philanthropy, the Clinton Foundation, to help with research, “message guidance” and the planning of commemorative events, according to foundation officials. During the same period, he also worked on and off as a paid consultant to Media Matters and American Bridge, organizations that helped lay the groundwork for Mrs. Clinton’s 2016 campaign.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/19/us/politics/clinton-friends-libya-role-blurs-lines-of-politics-and-business.html?_r=0

[yellowcanine]

7. "That horse will get up I tell ya, just beat him a little harder!"

[cosmicone]

8. American people have already tuned out

and this will create more and more sympathy for HRC. People have shown that they will not only forgive the Clintons time and again but a lot of them secretly admire them as underdogs being constantly attacked by bullies.

The constituency the repukes are trying to please has shrunk and is already against HRC. There is nothing to gain there.

Secondly, by keeping HRC in the news, the voices from the clown bus are unable to get any traction.

If the repukes were smart, they would have waited until they had a nominee